>What's the point of a service fee on top of the cost of your meal though? For the same reason airlines don't include mandatory charges in their fares - humans

>What's the point of a service fee on top of the cost of your meal though? For the same reason airlines don't include mandatory charges in their fares - humans are not particularly good at rational pricing evaluation. It's known as partition pricing and generally results in higher revenues - from "The Effects on Perceived Restaurant Expensiveness of Tipping and Its Alternatives": [1] "Furthermore, participants ordered more expensive meals when automatic gratuities were added to the bill than when the costs of service were built into menu prices" [1] http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1162&context=chrpubs http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic... See also: http://www.msi.org/reports/divide-and-prosper-effects-of-partitioned-prices-on-consumers-price-recall/ http://www.msi.org/reports/divide-and-prosper-effects-of-par...